


En Plein Air

by rednihilist



Series: Colin Luthor 'Verse [19]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depression, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2018-12-27 18:55:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12087273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rednihilist/pseuds/rednihilist
Summary: Lin’s art installation is pretty much already the event of the season.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: _Smallville_ and certain characters belong to Miller-Gough et al. No profit is gained from this writing—only, hopefully, enjoyment.
> 
> There is no non-con/dub-con/rape depicted in this story, but there are numerous references to it having occurred in the past. I included the tag just to be safe, as I certainly do not want to trigger anyone.

Lex hires a driver for the opening, just so it’s on someone else, and in this case someone who’s driven for him before, to maneuver the car in and around such a strange overwrought venue.

Michael stops the car about half a mile back from the absurd glitz and glam of relatively famous people awkwardly climbing out from shiny expensive cars and smiling plasticly as they saunter up Lin’s version of a red carpet: vinyl tablecloths stapled together.

What those dingbats up there don’t realize of course is just how much of a jerk Lin is because that stylish red carpet in fact, according to the artist himself, deadends right at a portable toilet, forcing the poor fools to retrace their steps back to the entrance and take one of the other, less glamorous dirt paths down to the beach where the real show is.

“They waste so much time on the wrong kind of beauty,” Lin had told him just the other night, in explanation, after he’d just finished telling Lex, “Don’t go toward the cameras, ok?”

And Lex had grinned and nodded. He said, “How delightfully devious of you to point out their flaws.”

Lin had smiled.

Lex unhooks his seat belt and meets Michael’s eyes in the rear view mirror.

“I’ll text when I’m ready,” he says.

Michael nods.

Getting out of the car as discreetly as he can, Lex pulls his coat closer, oddly grateful for the biting chill and wetness in the night air. It’s a welcome wake-up after what turned out to be an excruciatingly long and frustrating day downtown: board meeting running all goddamn morning; lunch with lobbyists wining and dining him in the hopes of him promising financial support for relaxing regulations on what seems like every damn aspect of business, which gave Lex a headache and had him shouting in public again; getting updates on 33.1 that showed several areas weren’t at all where he’d been assured they would be at this point; more paperwork and calls and signatures to try and kill that farce currently still fucking, somehow, filming in Gotham; and then several attempts to start scheduling for company events, now only a couple months away, which meant trying and failing to get Lucas on the line, since he’d claimed since last year he wanted to be in charge of organizing this year’s New Year’s Eve gala.

Lex takes out his phone and turns on the flashlight, spotting a tiny, rocky, dark path cut away and packed down among the overgrown weeds and dying Fall grasses.

It’s opening night of what the media has decided to refer to as Lin’s “sculpture garden,” a project he’s been working on hush-hush for at least a year and in that whole time never telling Lex much of anything about it beyond, “Oh, it’s progressing.”

“Is it abstract?” Lex had asked, once.

“Not really,” Lin had said.

He’d tried being sneaky. “What kind of materials are you working with?”

Lin had said, “Not paint this time.”

Month Eight, Lex asked, “Do you have a venue picked out?”

Lin said, “Yeah, I think so,” and that was it.

Lex only found out the show was confirmed when he read it in the newspaper. Listed there two months ago under “Newsworthy Notices,” “Colin Luthor: Untitled Art Show” appeared right between “Clark & Bodesman: Charity Dinner” and “Harper Ne’va: F/W Line Preview.”

And then, starting last month, Linny would slip Lex little tips, like to avoid the paparazzi.

Or like, two weeks ago, when a text invitation pinged on his phone, declaring Lex a VIP with an all-access pass to “CL’s ‘Pochade.’ ” It told him to “Dress for Hiking,” promised the location would be texted the day of, and warned: “Unoffical/Personal Photography Not Permitted.”

Last night, Lin went so far as to put a folded up scarf on top of Lex’s dresser. He then shuffled over into bed, into Lex’s arms, murmuring into his chest, “No chance of you wearing a hat, but that might help.”

In the script for this streaming TV-movie monstrosity, this hack piece of sensationalist bullshit that Lex furiously scanned through back in May at Nick’s request and decried, this vile mockery of their real fucking lives that’s still filming somehow, despite numerous Cease and Desists and, yes, Lex is somewhat ashamed to say, actual bribes to shut down production, there’s one particular scene that sticks with him, that he’s terrified is actually going to wind up onscreen whenever the dreck is actually aired or distributed or uploaded. This piece of shit that’s filming right under Bruce’s goddamn nose in Gotham features a scene where the adopted middle ‘Castell’ brother, who’s described early on as ‘beautifully traumatized with wet eyes in a perpetual thousand-yard stare,’ says to the infamous older brother, who is, of course, fucking bald from a childhood illness, “You know what Dad always said to me? ‘The lessons we learn from pain make us the strongest.’ ”

The middle brother, Marcus, then reaches out and grabs the older brother, Alastair, by the hand and says, in close-up, in what is described in the script as a ‘chillingly flirtatious and vaguely threatening whisper,’ “I can take everything and never say a word.”

He says later, to the older brother’s close friend, “No one needs ever know what really happened.”

In fact, the Marcus character’s final lines in the script are spoken, not in the actual final scene, but the one before it, where it’s him, the Alastair character, and the youngest brother, Ian, all riding in the back of a limo on its way to their father’s funeral service.

Marcus says, “Hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? If I don’t mind– Alistair, hey, hey, if I don’t mind, then why should you? I’m fine.”

The writer’s notes say in brackets, following that: [Alastair is frowning, doubtful of Marcus’s reassurances. Alastair shares a loaded look with Ian. Marcus stares into the middle distance, as the city passes across his face by way of reflection in the limo’s window. In close-up, Marcus’s hands are shown to be clenched, his knuckles bone-white. In all subsequent shots, Marcus is framed off-center and from above. He is already out of focus.]

Lex can’t stop thinking about that description.

He can’t help but think, as he’s about halfway down to the eerily red-lit beach, as he stops suddenly when his flashlight catches on something reflective sticking out from the brush to his left, that maybe that fucking TV-movie is more terrifying than insulting because it’s shockingly accurate.

As he takes a few careful steps closer to the shape hiding in the brush, Lex is able to pick out an exposed hand and arm and shoulder, a human arm, its fingers pointing back toward the road. It’s a sculpture made of wire, coiled and wrapped to imitate muscles and bones and tendons, bronze in color, maybe even actual bronze. From the positioning, the viewer is presumably meant to infer the rest of the figure is buried beneath the sand.

Lex almost smiles, continuing down the path despite what might be another one of Lin’s mind games, warning him to go back. And Lex wonders if anyone else would immediately know, beyond a doubt, that Lin constructed not only what’s visible of that figure above the sand, the arm, hand, and shoulder, but also everything else, the head and torso and legs and feet, only to then hide and bury it all away beneath the sand like a secret, all his hard work disguised like he does with everything he thinks no one will appropriately appreciate.

“They always make such a weird spectacle of everything,” Lin had said at his last showing, embarrassed and then annoyed by all the photographers blocking his canvases, snapping photos worth thousands not of the art, but of the audience.

The half-buried sculpture in sand strikes a chord with Lex, hitting a very specific frayed nerve Lin may or may not know about—because Lex is still uncomfortable with how he actually feels about Lin displaying his art, displaying and then selling it. He knows how he _should_ feel on Lin’s behalf, and he is proud and happy for his success, for how much his self-confidence has grown with each moment of self-expression.

But Lex also feels a whole lot more that isn’t noble. He thinks of the painting in his office that Lin first displayed for the public and then gave to him, gave to Lex, and he’s jealous and petty enough to still not be satisfied, even though he’s the only one who knows it’s not really just a self-portrait. Lex wants Lin to be happy and healthy, but he also wants all of Lin, all of his work, and all of his attention. And so Lex isn’t always sure when he’s reading correctly the hidden meanings to Lin’s words and art and behavior, sifting carefully for those awful truths Lin can only tell _him_ —or when Lex is simply projecting more that what’s honestly there.

“Nervous?” Lex asked Lin this morning, reaching over to brush his hair out of his face.

Lin just smiled and looked away, started talking about something else entirely, and Lex realized only then that the distance and silence between them of late, that he’d interpreted as anxiety on Lin’s part about the upcoming show, might not have been coming from Lin at all.

The road they’re walking these days, carefully, secretly, with only part-time help at the house, with only occasional appearances together in public, isn’t smooth or easy. Money doesn’t solve everything. It doesn’t solve Lex being in love with his own brother.

And that leaves him to wonder, as he trudges down and down: did Lin make this path with Lex in mind, or did Lex just choose this one because it fucking fits?

Staged on the residential west bank of the river, on a piece of land Lin bought with his own money, “Pochade” officially opens at midnight tonight, which means, technically, at 11:45, Lex is unfashionably early for once in his life. Backlit by the industrial lights of the working docks across the water, Lin’s art installation is pretty much already the event of the season, if not the calendar year.

The Planet ran a small notice in today’s paper, featuring a few comments from Lin’s agent and one stock quote from Lin himself, where he described the installation as a “hypermodern approach to maximalist performance sculpture.”

Lex easily translated that to mean: “I’m going to fuck with your heads, and you’re going to love it and completely miss the fact I’m making fun of you.”

Ahead, a great gnarled tree looms, all but blocking the last bit of the path. As he tries to sidle around it, Lex spies another wire figure down low, this one in green, arms and legs wrapped around the base of the tree trunk like it’s hugging it for safety. It’s small, maybe a child, and part of Lex wants to reach out and touch, but he’d ruin the illusion, the associations Lin’s conjured.

Julian, of course, who won’t ever be that small again.

But also Linny and Lex himself.

And Mom. God, Mom, with that sad smile of hers.

Lex thinks of their old house with the trees. So much land they never used or explored.

He almost thinks of. . .  

Lex moves around the tree, and he’s arrived. The ground levels out a bit, now more sand than dirt or grass. And there, directly to his left, sculpted from thick gold-colored wire, kneels a feminine figure, her arm extended out in front of her—back toward the tree, reaching.

Was she sculpted to read as desperate, or is that just Lex again?

He can’t breathe for a second because even just this is so much more intense than Lin’s paintings. He knows the hands that first sketched this woman kneeling, that then bent and twisted the wire to create her, that likely secured her here on the beach precisely at the end of this path. He knows every fleck and whorl of the eyes that heated and fused that wire together more securely than any blowtorch. Lex knows the head that dreamed all this.

He walks and walks, stopping at each figure, dozens of them, and he’s simultaneously amazed and unsurprised at how they all seem one big breath away from moving. One figure is stretched out on its back, as though sunbathing, and he laughs, remembering the feel of Lin’s fingernails pressing into his shoulder blades last night, almost able to see skin atop the wire.

It’s like being inside Lin’s head, seeing the broadest and yet most intimate strokes of what Lin processes of humanity, walking through and past and around what Lin remembers and dreams of. The sculptures are his version of an impressionist beach scene, wire figures sitting and lying together, heads thrown back in laughter, some standing and all but running toward the river, one beautifully positioned in the tide as though about to dive into the water. At the far end of the beach, a group of figures play volleyball, one suspended in mid-air, at the peak of a jump, about to spike a volleyball over a nonexistent net. But Lex can almost hear them laughing and shouting. He can just about see the net.

It’s only later, when he’s walked around the entire beach, periodically bumping into other flesh and blood people and sharing an awed smile or two, once, at the level of detail in one sculpture’s long ponytail, and a second time at the way a figure’s posture seemed to all but scream the water was too cold—Lex realizes he forgot to look for Lin, flesh and blood Lin.

He knows he’s here somewhere. He’ll want to see the initial reaction.

“Pochade,” he says to himself, standing again down by the water, looking once more at the figure poised to dive, and if Lex remembers correctly, pochade isn’t necessarily about the accuracy or the precision of the line at all. And while that might seem funny or ironic to some, considering Lin’s figures here are almost entirely composed of lines, it doesn’t surprise Lex, so much as it clarifies for him what Lin’s really attempting to convey. Pochades are sketches focused not on capturing the lines of the subject but the impression it makes, the ripples and effects surrounding and tinting the artist’s perception of the subject, the range of color and overall atmosphere of the entire moment. They’re portable memories, referential like shorthand or in-jokes or great works of art.

Lin’s wire figures are placeholders, occupying spaces he never has, and perhaps, for everyone down here looking at them and for those who might someday view photos of them in anthologies and online and, Lex muses, maybe even in art texts like the ones Linny had so loved, they’re also sketches of hope. At least, that’s what Lex likes to believe because of all the moments Lin could spend probably more than a year planning and reinterpreting and recreating, and of all the figures swimming and leaping and lying and diving around in his memory that he could choose to sculpt and position, he chose a fantasy of a day at the beach. Lin chose a beach he owned, a season he still has mixed feelings about, a time of day that still has him on edge even a decade and more later, and he chose to put all of it on display, to open it to the public and preserve it forever.

The diving figure is something else entirely though, and Lex stands in the same spot, to the left of it, staring for what seems an eternity. The shoulders low and the arms thrown high overhead, that curve that would fit Lex’s palm seamlessly, the long stretch of thigh that he could fill in with just the right skin tone, soft hair, overwhelming heat, and that little mole on the back down by the left knee, those feet with the crooked toes and that head with that hair, thick like a blanket that Lin still cuts himself alone in the bathroom, tangles and whorls across Lex’s pillow in the morning, that Lex runs his hands through almost every chance he gets. Lin is here, put himself here, and it’s only when Lex is fumbling his phone back out of his pocket as he walks away that he’s slightly embarrassed to find he’s crying.

He texts Michael to try and meet him back up at the start of the same path in five minutes. And people brush past Lex, but he keeps his eyes on his feet, wrung out, wrung dry but light, happy.

And just as he’s passing the tree trunk again with its tiny figure wrapped around the base, the wire woman on the other side reaching for it, for the child, not forgetting or leaving or dying—someone’s hand comes down between Lex’s shoulder blades.

Someone’s hand.

“Hey,” Lin then whispers in his ear.

Lex stops and looks up ahead at the path. Empty and dark, and he thinks, awfully, _Just like me_.

He wipes at his eyes and says, “Hey.”

“Walk with me?” Lin asks.

Lex snorts, and it’s wet and ridiculous. “ ‘Course,” he says. Then, “Can’t fool me.”

The path was barely wide enough for just Lex on the way down, and with the two of them together they’re each forced to walk half in the overgrowth.

Lex doesn’t mind a bit and knows Lin doesn’t either.

Lin moves his hand up to the back of Lex’s neck, and he says, in time with their footsteps as they carefully trudge upward together, “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Then, already breathless with that gorgeous, painful dark humor of his that the fucking pretentious TV-movie _Blanket Permission_ actually managed to get right, Lin asks, “What’d you think?”

Lex smiles and says, “You big softie, you.” Then he stupidly, blindly reaches across to grab Lin’s hand, praying it’s dark enough still, even here, even now, to hide and forget and remember something a little bit more hopeful.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warning for past non-con/rape and the lasting effects of sexual trauma and abuse.

Not three years ago, Lin would have felt honored to say, “This city is my home.” He would have thought it the truth.

But that isn’t the case anymore, if it ever truly was.

Experience has proven that, within and without, down deep, upside down, and right side up, Metropolis is only as dear to Lin as its dearest citizen deems it, which is to say: only as important as Lex says it is.

Lin is Lex’s, his and only his.

Lin’s always been someone else’s and never really his own.

And Lex is by far the better master.

Lin’s his. . .

Across Lex’s chest, a splash of freckles tease Lin, taunt him. He, feeling silly tonight, counts them as friends and confidants and bestows upon them deep, wet kisses, a press of his lips to each reddish, brownish, simultaneously deep and shallow circular dot, each bit and piece of Lex stacked and layered, each and every freckle that’s been with him, ridden silently with him, through all the good and bad, the cruel and freeing, all these years. Thirty-six tiny perfect dots are scattered in a spray like dust across Lex’s chest, over his heart, steadfast when even Lex wavers, when even Lin falters. Lex’s body is a different and unexpected kind of stalwart, a strange type of considerate, making moves and motions toward Lin before even Lex’s brain kicks in.

Lex’s body knows Lin better than he knows himself, and Lin trusts this body infinitely more than his own, more than some still-vague alien vessel that was someone else’s plaything for so long.

Too long.

Lex’s secrets barely hide, on his body or in his head, showy specks like their host, still wanting to be discovered and unravelled. Lex believes himself inscrutable to most if not all, but all it takes is the right cipher.

Lin kisses the freckle just to the right of Lex’s left nipple.

“Hello there,” Lin whispers.

Lex wriggles beneath him, sucks in a deep breath, surprised, gratified, amused. His hand alights on Lin’s head, and he says, in a deep voice just as bottomless and intimate as Lin’s most bizarre dreams, “We ought to take a vacation somewhere: Venice, maybe.”

Lin presses his smile into Lex’s chest, his lips flattening against the smooth skin of Lex’s chest, the heat and cool of him, the familiarity. Lin longs, always, but especially in moments like these where they’re just who they are and not what everyone else is expecting them to be, for the unique tempo of Lex’s touch, his reassurance. Lin is fluent in the tap-and-drag of Lex’s fingers across Lin’s scalp and through his hair or the squeeze-squeeze-clench of his hand along Lin’s arms and shoulders, waist, hips, and ass.

He is fluent in Lex.

When they were young, of course, so very young and somehow still largely innocent of the exact depth of the world’s evil, Lex was almost as good at deciphering Lin’s silence. He would efficiently pull Lin away from especially bad moments and maneuver them to a different part of the house, the pool, perhaps, with its greens and blues and rich black hues or the library with its rows and columns of fascinating books, or shift them back to a different point in time maybe, as Lex recounted for Lin in detail the many exploits of Alexander the Great and Hephaestion or King Arthur and his knights or Emperor Trajan, or even just a slight readjustment to a different dynamic between them, soft caresses to Lin’s hair and hugs that still, back then, early on before everything came unspooled, didn’t end with a scoff and Lin being pushed away in disgust or anger.

Carved between them, despite it all, is a gap, a crevasse containing all the years Lex spent hating Lin and Lin spent trying, trying, trying not to fall apart completely.

Lin has found himself capable of remembering everything all the time, but he tries to choose, tries to focus in on only the pieces still worth the pain: Lex, Julian.

But, too often, it’s Lionel.

Lionel, dear, deadly, awful, beautiful, monstrous Lionel, often said to Lin in a whisper, in a specific cadence, like a chant or incantation, a pattern of speech not unlike Lex’s touches, an informal referencing to Lionel’s own brand of secrets, his own awful moments from decades and decades past, “The lessons we learn from pain make us the strongest.”

Lex’s secrets barely hide, but Lin’s damn near succeed. As for Lionel’s. . .  

Lin runs his hands over Lex’s chest in appreciation and worship, even as he fears, in a stab somewhere behind his navel, that Lionel is his one true god. Wasn’t Lin modeled after him, molded and taught by him? What deity could command an alien, after all?

Is it Lex?

Is Lex Lin’s master or his analog?

Why can’t he be both?

“You’re thinking too goddamn much,” Lex says, his words sharply careening downward in a groan, as Lin scrapes his teeth across the stiff flesh of Lex’s left nipple.

He then swoops low and takes Lex in his mouth, half because he enjoys it, the power, Lex’s instant response, the intimacy, but half, surely—to pull Lex away from a moment that might rapidly turn sour.

No gag reflex, no real pain, no hesitance, and Lin is almost, here and now, Lex’s puppet master. He pulls his strings, curling his tongue up and around from the tip back, from underneath and wet, looking up and making eye contact with those eyes, dark pupil devouring the pale iris. Lin holds Lex’s thighs tight in each hand and pushes them back high toward his belly like a promise, exposing him, loving him, steering Lex, even just a little bit.

Maybe the secret isn’t that Lin still isn’t his own man. Maybe it’s that he still, despite it all, belongs to someone other than Lex.

He’s here with Lex—right here with the man beneath him whose back arches beautifully, whose left hand yanks at Lin’s hair, desperately trying to pull him, bring him higher, likely so they can switch gears, Lex in Lin or Lin in Lex—but Lin is also young and younger still, seeking to maneuver around a different man, and while he tries to only remember what he wants to remember, Lin recalls everything all the time, and the bad still sometimes outweighs the good.

So Lin tries to outrun it.

He pulls his mouth off Lex with a loud, obscene pop, and then he pushes those legs higher and rolls his tongue down lower.

“Fuck!” Lex hisses, his toes curling above Lin’s head. Lex moans when Lin pushes his tongue inside him in a furl, his hands clenching, squeeze-squeeze-clench, around Lin’s head.

He’s here; Lin’s here. He’s here with Lex.

But he’s not.

Lin jerks back, accidentally dropping one of Lex’s legs, which has Lex raising his head to look down his body at Lin.

“Li. . . ?” he starts.

But he steals the concern from Lex’s mouth, kissing him despite where his mouth’s just been, and Lex, weirdo that he is, doesn’t mind a bit. He kisses back, wrapping his legs around Lin’s waist, sweating, wet from Lin’s mouth, pale and rosy, and all for Lin.

Lin whispers into Lex’s mouth, in a voice he’s not sure is his own, “I can take everything you give me.”

It has an odd effect because Lex doesn’t move faster or groan or smile with sharp teeth like Lin almost expects. His hands don’t tap-and-drag across Lin’s cheeks.

He just stops, stills, like he’s locked. He then reaches out and turns Lin’s head to face him until they’re staring into each other’s eyes, and it might be romantic, the tiny brown flecks in the blue of Lex’s irises, the tiny pale figure of Lin reflected in Lex’s pupils, but Lex doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t smile or look at Lin with love. He’s still hard against Lin’s stomach, but his expression is something Lin used to see from him a lot and hoped never to see again.

Lin just killed the moment, and he whispers, before leaving the room in rush, “Sorry.”

He’s already across the house, seconds later. Standing naked and hard in his studio, covered in Lex’s sweat and pre-come and his own saliva, it takes hardly a brush of his hand before Lin’s coming.

And it’s not only Lex. It’s never, despite it all, despite how Lin contorts and falls and eventually, somehow, gets back up again, only just Lex.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quoted lines from Donne's "To His Mistress Going to Bed."

It’s the Saturday morning following Lin’s Friday night opening, and Lex has just barely managed to haul himself out of bed and downstairs for caffeine.

It’s 6:17, which is late for him these days. He can recall, hazy and surreal now, when he wouldn’t’ve even cracked open his eyes before 11. He can remember not even leaving a club until 4 and not even passing out until 7.

Lex has been awake this morning since 5, dreading opening his eyes to an empty bed, and he can already tell that, apart from Angie here in the kitchen and Greg already working outside at winterizing the grounds, the rest of the house is empty too, devoid of that particular intensity Lex is sure he can feel even halfway across the city.

That he can’t feel it now means Lin’s somewhere far away. Maybe north in that fortress he and Lucas try their damnedest not to mention.

When Lex is feeling charitable, he likes to think they talk around it to avoid making him feel bad. When he’s failing and embittered and thoroughly his father’s son, Lex knows they don’t talk about it around him because they don’t want him up there, poking around.

Lex must look almost as bad as he feels because Angie doesn’t say any more than she has to as he climbs onto a stool at the kitchen island. She probably thinks he’s hungover, which isn’t all that farfetched, considering who he is and the fact he’d attended a huge public event last night. Angie had packed him a lunch and a dinner yesterday, two Tupperware containers in a stylish little black bag Lex thinks Lin likely purchased online specifically for him.

Now, as she gently sets down a full demitasse in front of him, Lex tries not to wonder what she must be thinking: of him, of Lin, of them, of the fact Lex is 37 and single, and Lin is 30 and single, and they are still living together.

He tries not to wonder where Lin is or what he’s doing. A braver person would try calling him, but Lex is sitting here worrying just as much about seeing him after what happened last night as he is about what it means that Lin’s absent. He’s simultaneously thankful and terrified.

But Lin’s gone for bad reasons, and while Lex kind of thinks he fucked up last night, deep down he—knows he didn’t.

What’s fucked up is the relationship itself.

He takes a small sip of the bitter espresso and wishes it were whisky or vodka or fucking Everclear. Oblivion sounds lovely this time of year. And here he’d been gearing up for a vacation, a holiday, sweettalking Lin into flying, in a jet, somewhere overseas (Venice) where they could carefully be together for weeks and weeks, a month of just them and none of the accompanying bullshit. He’d been looking forward to forgetting the bad and remembering only the good, to showing off his painstakingly acquired cooking skills and reading to him and watching movies neither of them had seen and going out, disguised, as a couple. He wants to kiss Lin in public.

Lex brought his phone downstairs with him, but he hasn’t turned off the Do Not Disturb, so it’s lying right here on the counter silent and blank. He knows, though, that it’s full of messages and emails, all from work, none from family.

He wants to think of Julian and Lucas and Bruce and Dick, wants to miss them more than he does.

Lex finishes the espresso but keeps right on sitting and doing absolutely nothing.

Outside, it’s overcast and about to rain.

Ten minutes later, the house is still relatively silent and relatively empty, and Lex faces facts and pushes away from the counter, grabbing his phone and heading back upstairs. He’ll shower and dress and set up in his office for the morning. Angie will bug him with lunch around one o’clock, which he’ll pick at, and around two in the afternoon he’ll cave and pour himself a double. Heartier metabolism means he drinks three times as much and only pays for it with sleep.

“You need to eat more,” Lin always tells him. “Need more calories. Then you wouldn’t collapse like that.”

Lex’s response depends on the situation, on his mood.

Sometimes he says, “Well, we can’t all be solar-powered gods.”

To which, Lin snarks, “Demi-god, at best, and you just proved my point.”

Sometimes Lex is already fraying, and Lin’s little jabs become more kindling tossed onto the fire.

That’s when Lex jabs back, saying something like, “Yes, _Mom_. Help me remember to brush my teeth later too, ok?”

Or, “Who’s the older brother in this relationship again?”

And of course then Lin shuts down and walks out.

For Lex can’t help but remember, constantly, that they are who they are, that he is Lex Luthor and Lin is his younger brother, and that they are so goddamn screwed if any of this ever gets out, but Lin, of course, doesn’t want to be reminded because Lin, of course, dear, beautiful, lovely, extraordinary Lin, has already something of a skewed impression of family. He looks at Lex like Lex is the alien.

And it burns because he’s right, because somehow Lin is more human than Lex. He’s certainly more courageous.

When did caution turn into repression? And some snarled portion of Lex still resents the fact he’s always the bad guy, the nag, the one digging in his heels and holding everyone back.

Or is he?

Lex makes it up to the master bath and starts the shower before sliding out of his clothes.

After Lin vanished last night, Lex sat on the edge of the bed, on his side, with his head in his hands for almost an hour, just replaying over and over again everything that went wrong. He remembers how Lin wouldn’t come home with him and how it was Lex who moved away first when they reached the car. He remembers sighing when Lin walked into the bedroom and wonders now if Lin might not have misinterpreted that as frustration or annoyance instead of relief. Lex thinks he was too careful when he should’ve been insistent and bold, too distant, how he seemed to react the wrong way to everything Lin said.

But what Lin said was like every awful thing Lex had ever thought, distilled and repackaged and tossed back in his face almost casually. Lin’s pillow talk, his sweet nothings, are Lex’s nightmares.

Now, as he pulls open the glass door and steps in against the steam of the water, as he ducks his head low against the tile and lets the hot water pound high on his back, Lex tries not to see how Lin had looked at him last night, how wide and wet his eyes were as he made his awful declarations, how desperate he’d been, rough like he only gets when he’s clinging to the edge, when he’s more in the past than in the present, and Lex missed all the signs. He looked at the Lin he was with and ran headfirst into the realization that they’re not healthy together.

Julian’s right.

Why do they keep doing this to each other?

How can they ever fucking work?

Lin deserves better. He deserves more.

Lex tries to catch his breath on something that wants to be a sob: Lin deserves to be made happy, not ashamed. He deserves to live his life now and not be forced to relive the horrors of his childhood.

And then the air is suddenly sucked out of the shower as the glass door opens behind him, and Lex almost chokes as someone, the only one, runs a cold proprietary hand down Lex’s spine.

Then it’s Lin’s other arm wrapping around Lex’s collarbone and pulling him bodily back and against. It’s Lin, hotter than the scalding water.

There are no words for what Lex feels, for what he thinks when Lin is near, and Lin is still silent more often than not.

They don’t talk a whole lot, and Lex likes to think, chooses to believe, that it’s because they don’t need to, not that they’re just no good at it.

Between them, it’s always looks and touch, Lin’s eyes catching his from across the room or that specific tilt of his head that never fails to make Lex bite his lip to keep from laughing, or that ghastly imitation smile Lin forces onto his face in public that has Lex bailing on whatever he’d been doing, whoever he’d been talking to, and rushing over to pull Lin away, to try and rescue him, always too late, from whatever insensitive trash someone had lobbed at him.

Now, it’s Lin’s hand gliding up the back of Lex’s neck, his fingers curling around and gripping just this side of too tight because Lin still can’t ask for what he wants, what he needs, only play it out through Lex.

The problem with sublimation, of course, is it’s difficult to pick what’s buried and for how long. Lex remembers a lot, maybe even most of what happened, what he can stand to, but he’s almost as far from healthy and well-adjusted as Lin. He forgets sometimes or can’t bear to remember. He gets trapped in his head, stuck in loops, and every now and then he mixes things up, misremembers.

But he tries. He keeps trying for Lin.

So Lex turns in Lin’s arms and takes Lin by the throat, hard, almost harder than he means to. And something in him preens and unfolds, relaxes almost, when Linny’s eyes go that specific kind of wide, when his mouth drops open and his hands slacken, running soft and shaky along the back of Lex’s head.

Right answer.

Lex jerks Lin down by his throat, thumb rolling over Lin’s Adam’s apple. He pulls him down and down because his little brother is taller and broader, and Lex makes the kiss messy, something just as fucked up as they are, wet, scalding, and rude, imprecise and full of every single word Lex is too chickenshit to say and Lin is still too careful to let escape.

Lin takes and takes and hoards it all away for a rainy day, and of course today: well, just outside the master bath and beyond their little oasis, it’s overcast and raining, blowing sideways with that merciless Midwestern wind, all force and fury, the sound of it whistling through the cracks of the house Lin bought just for the two of them.

And here they are collapsing inward again. Wasn’t he just thinking they had to stop?

But when it’s right, it’s perfect.

Lex reaches down and wraps his hand around Lin’s cock, and he pulls until Lin’s groaning into Lex’s mouth, until he’s almost, just about, nearly a part of Lex and they’re almost on the same page again.

Lex slides his hand over Lin again and again, as he slides his tongue into and out of Lin’s mouth, until it’s only time separating them, not his doubts or Lin’s silence.

But then Lin turns him, moving as fast as only he can, and Lex is face-first against the tile once more. Lex is pushing back and all but begging for Lin’s long fingers, his wide palms, his too-clever tongue and lips.

It’s almost a repeat of last night, almost exactly the same except completely different because they’re getting it right this time. And Lex takes it upon himself to shift the moment, adjust it, to fill the silence with something beautiful before Lin says something. Lex recites, on an exhale, water cascading down his face, “ ‘License my roving hands, and let them go’. . . ”

And Colin, his love, his Lin, his Linny above and beyond all boundaries, huffs and finishes the passage, completes the circle. He whispers back into Lex’s ear through time and all manner of pain and suffering, pushing them once more toward ecstasy and away from misery: “ ‘Before, behind, between, above, below.’ ”

Right answer.

Lex arches his back, and Lin drapes himself over him, his chest to Lex’s back and their hands tangling beneath and inside. Lex comes, holding his breath with Lin’s hand hot and heavy inside him, and it’s only seconds before Lin’s following him, wet heat spilling between Lex’s thighs and running down, Lin’s lips sucking a new bruise on his left shoulder blade.

Lex breathes and breathes and grabs hold of Lin’s hand, pressing it against his chest, his heart, and while he can’t quite summon the courage to say. . .

Lin kisses Lex on the cheek and says, doing his best, “ ‘To enter in these bonds is to be free’. . . ”

It’s not exactly a romantic or healthy sentiment when applied to them. It is true, though.

Lex had already willingly given up everything before he knew better, and Lin never had a chance. And they’ll probably never be anything but unhealthy and codependent.

But Lex keeps trying for Lin, and Lin has never failed him—never.

“ ‘Souls unbodied,’ ” Lex murmurs, letting his head drop forward to rest against the tile. And he can feel Lin’s dark smile pressed like a kiss into his shoulder, can feel him hard again against his ass, and then they’re together in a moment where Lex wants for nothing, not a thing he doesn’t already possess.


	4. Chapter 4

Lin wakes up, and Lex is already gone for the day. It’s not even eight yet on a Sunday morning, but it’s Lex: he works every day.

Lin rolls over and grabs his phone from the nightstand, checking it for anything urgent.

What he has are some texts from his agent Claire, which consist of two links to reviews of ‘Pochade’ and one spreadsheet of bids already in place for the sculptures, along with a couple dozen emails that somehow made it past his spam filter, all asking for soundbites or advice or invasive, insensitive behind the scenes information. And as he’s painstakingly deleting each email after a cursory skim, his phone suddenly vibrates and a reminder pops up from his calendar.

It says: 2 Months till 25!!!

Lin almost crushes his phone.

He’d set reminders for everyone’s birthdays and anniversaries when he got this phone back in February, and now it’s October and Julian’s 25th birthday is exactly two months away.

He should’ve picked up on it last week, and maybe he had and just didn’t want to get into it. Lin tends to do that a lot anymore, put stuff off or push it away. Last week, Tuesday, when Lin was waiting for Lex to finish packing his briefcase so they could leave for the day, Lex had mentioned something while thinking out loud to himself. He’d muttered under his breath, “And then just hold whatever he wants there. Bastion probably, since it’ll be, yeah, there and not here.” He’d shaken his head at himself and then looked up at Lin, clicking the latches on his briefcase and smiling at him. “Ready?” he’d asked.

So Lex is probably already planning some huge party for Julian, and of course he’s going to hold it at one of his own nightclubs.

Lin hasn’t ever seen the appeal of clubbing, but both Lex and Julian still orbit that scene, and Lin’s been kind of dragged along, regardless.

And Bastion in Gotham is at least one of the tamer clubs, more geared toward cutting edge music acts and pushing sales on beer from its sister-brewery next door than promoting any actual kind of club culture. Lex saves that last bit for the clubs he owns here in Metropolis, two of them, and doesn’t that just make a certain kind of overly-protective sense? Keep Vermeil and Sutra as far from Lian as he can and still turn a profit.

That had been a weird conversation years ago. Lin had been sitting on the sofa in Lex’s office, ostensibly reading while Lex met with one of their personal lawyers. The meeting had concluded with some new business Lex had very pointedly kept secret from Lin and had likely hoped to keep a secret.

At the time, Lin had just sighed and made the mistake of rolling his eyes in response. Lex had caught him, though, and he’d glowered at Lin from across the room as he signed the paperwork finalizing the purchase of, at the time, the Atlantis nightclub, which Lex and his team would renovate and eventually rebrand Sutra.

“What?” Lex had demanded after the lawyer left. He’d imitated Lin sighing and asked, “What’s that mean?”

Lin said, “I remember that club. Just think it’s odd, but not surprising really, that you bought it.”

Lex asked, “Remember it from _when_ exactly? Place has been boarded up for more than five years.”

Lin didn’t respond, just kept his eyes on his book and let Lex figure it out himself.

That’s what he’s always liked doing, after all.

And the unspoken rule is, despite numerous therapists over the years advising otherwise to Julian and Lucas and even Lex (but never Lin, as he point-blank refuses to see one), they don’t talk directly about Lionel, none of them, ever. They hint, and they talk around him.

Lin didn’t make the rule, and he doesn’t precisely like it, but it works. It saves them in the short run, and that’s really all Lin can handle. It’s why he sets himself reminders. He can’t keep everything at the forefront of his mind and wouldn’t even if he could.

But Lin can remember Lex staring at him back then. He can remember how Lex sounded when he broke the rule and asked, voice muffled by his hands as he rubbed them over his face, “Did he have you follow me? Everywhere?”

Lin had snapped the book shut, and he’d broken the rule a little too. He’d said, eyes somewhere between the Atlantis, watching Lex snort cocaine and drink himself sick and kiss everyone, and Lex’s office, which used to be Lionel’s: “Only when you weren’t where you should be.”

Lex doesn’t go out to his clubs that often, at least not at night, and he doesn’t offer to take Lin with him.

Lin hasn’t even seen the inside of Vermeil, and he’s only glanced at pictures of Sutra.

But Julian is still young enough at 24, rich enough between his writing and inheritance, and wild enough as a Luthor to be found, more often than not, out on the town and in the papers the next morning.

From what Lin’s overheard, Lian’s almost as infamous as Lex was in certain circles.

Looking at his phone now, in his and Lex’s bed, Colin faces the fact that he’s overheard more about Julian in the last decade than he’s actually heard from Julian.

“Are you and Arkady still together?” Lin had dared to ask Lian just last New Year’s at the ELD Inc. gala. Lin was trying to figure out the boundaries of whatever relationship Lian had going with Rick Jameson’s son. He was trying and failing to be a big brother to Julian, a role Lin’s had to all but give up.

Since Lin and Lex became a thing, Lin and Julian are all but strangers.

Not much room for respect when Julian won’t even look at him.

And that’s just what Lian had done that night at the gala too. He’d kept his head turned the other way and had shrugged. Rather than answer Lin, he pretended to be fascinated by those on the dance floor as he finished off the last of his champagne and then waved at a waiter to bring him another.

And in that rush to drink to excess instead of talk, in the arch of Lian’s arm as he beckoned the help, and the cant of his head as he looked anywhere but at Lin—Julian was in that moment a perfect amalgamation of Lex, Lionel, and Lillian, and Colin had looked away too, never following up or pressing him further.

He has to, though. He’ll go crazy if he tries to hold it all at the same time.

Lin sees in the man Julian’s become the sum of a family that still isn’t entirely Lin’s own but that will always be Julian’s, by blood and birth.

Lex and Julian and even Lucas are brothers.

So at the gala, Lin had dropped the matter entirely. He still doesn’t know what happened between Julian and Arkady Jameson, whether Lian’s active nightlife is his way of medicating a tough breakup or just a Luthor’s natural tendency toward overindulgence. Lin doesn’t know if Julian and Arkady were serious or on and off boyfriends or just good friends because Julian is a stranger.

He talks to Lex apparently, as several times Lin has come into a room, Lex’s office downtown or the one here at the house or the den or even their bedroom, and Lex is on the phone, saying, laughingly, “Well, you can’t say _that_ , Lian,” or, “Sure, but isn’t that kind of lame?” or even, “I honestly have no idea, since I really only technically finished, but you can always just _ask_ , kid. Christ.”  

Julian’s forgiven Lex.

Lin remembers when he told Lian more than he told anyone. He remembers not having to tell Lian anything, and still that boy had known almost everything.

Almost everything.

Lin remembers holding Julian as a baby while Lex looked over his shoulder, sniffling and trying not to cry because his mom was gone forever, and Lex has never gotten used to people he loves leaving him.

He remembers pulling Lian close in a hug outside a movie theater, Lian’s forehead knocking against Lin’s ribs, and wishing he could just absorb this boy into himself and bodily protect him, forever hide him away from the games Lionel played and that Lex was slowly attempting to win.

Lin remembers each and every smile Lian smiled for him, and he remembers when they stopped, when he tracked down Julian at a fucking nightclub almost a decade ago, back when the kid was in high school. It was Gotham during the day and not Metropolis at night, but it was that same feeling rushing over Lin when he was face-to-face with Julian sprawled on a stained red couch, surrounded by his friends and sycophants and drugs and alcohol.

That was the beginning of the end, just like it was with Lex, Lin trying to pull him away and Lian staring back at him blearily, his face scrunched up in what’s become a familiar expression to Lin over the years, all downturned mouth and narrow eyes.

It’s disgust. It’s always disgust.

But Lin doesn’t ever talk about everything or anything, doesn't talk about Lionel, only around him, around them all, and he can’t quite seem to hold in his mind’s eye both the angry man and the little boy Julian used to be. There’s only so much room.

How does Lucas manage?

See, the truth is that Lin doesn’t like nightclubs because they always mean he’s fucked up again. And they’ve always seemed to be about losing control, and he _hates_ losing control. He’s never had enough control: he sure as hell isn’t giving any of it up.

And, really, the last thing he wants to spend his free time doing is keeping his strength in check around crowds of intoxicated people who, in Lin’s limited experience, are utterly shameless about invading others’ personal space. Lin had gotten groped a few times in clubs back then when he was about 12 or 13, and he doesn’t even want to imagine what it would be like now.

He doesn’t want to knowingly put himself in a situation where he’s resigned to just standing there and taking whatever comes his way.

If he wants to punish himself, he’ll damn well do it in private, not for an audience and not where Lex or Julian can see.

But it maybe wasn’t always going to be like this. Shift events a little, after all, and they’re all different people.

Clark Luthor loved going out, most likely still does wherever he and Tess ended up, and Clark Kent is always as fucking ambivalent about nightclubs as he is about most everything. Lin would hazard a guess most Clark Kents like clubs, as they generally seem to like people. But Clark likes quite a lot of things he feels he shouldn’t and thus hates himself for it.

Lin drops his phone on the bed and climbs out. He walks into the bathroom and takes a piss and starts the shower and tries so hard not to think about or remember things that were never his fault.

He hasn’t killed anyone, and they’re all still alive. Shouldn’t that be enough?

And it’s not like Lin speaks to Lucas any more than he speaks to Lian, but then he doesn’t really want to. He doesn’t need to.

And that’s mutual.

Is he just supposed to demand Lian talk to him? Maybe it’s unrealistic to expect they’d still be close as adults. Maybe it’s too much to expect Julian will be ok with Lin and Lex, after everything.

But he talks to _Lex_.

Never, growing up, had Lian made him feel like he was– was to blame for Lionel. Lex had. Lex has said some awful things, but Julian. . .

Lin looks up and realizes the water’s cold. He finishes washing and gets out of the shower, dries off, brushes his teeth and puts on deodorant and combs out his hair. He walks out into the bedroom and then sneaks out, sneaks down the hall to his own bedroom—just like he used to in the old house—and Lin goes to his closet and picks out clothes to wear and shoes and a watch, this one a gift from Lucas three years ago for Christmas.

It’s already past noon.

Lin’s lost time again, either while lying in bed or standing in the shower or both or some other moment besides.

And his phone’s still back in the other bedroom, in the bed, along with the clothes he’d been wearing last night, that he’d slipped off before climbing into bed with Lex.

Hours later, down in his studio, Lin can remember realizing he’d missed more than four hours that morning, but he blinks, is blinking, and suddenly he can’t quite recall how he got downstairs afterward.

He’s been painting, only not on canvas.

Lin blinks and catches the sound of the front door opening and Lex’s voice greeting Angie. He looks past the walls here and can see Lex setting down his briefcase and taking off his coat and hanging it up, and he can remember Lillian teasing Lex about how particular he was, how he liked routine but only with the little things, his shoes having to be lined up just right or the same kind of toothpaste or their books organized a certain way.

Lin can remember all that, and he can see and hear everything, but he doesn’t know why he’s painting the walls of his studio with green and black paint, and he can’t remember if he ever went and grabbed his phone or his clothes from the bedroom so the maid wouldn’t find them and wonder.

Lex asks Angie, “Is that a ham I smell?”

Angie laughs and says, “Honey-glazed.”

And Lin tries to ignore them, but he can still pick out the thump of Lex’s heart and the intake of air into Angie’s lungs before she speaks. He closes his eyes, but he can still see them, and he tries to breathe, but his hands are covered in paint because he didn’t use a brush.

Lian is so far away from him now, and Lucas is more Clark Kent than Lin has ever been or ever will be, and Lin can’t forget Lionel, only try to think around him.

See, the truth is that Lin loves Lex, but he’s falling again, deeper and deeper into his own head, and he thinks he’s forgotten to remember how to fly.


	5. Chapter 5

Lex gets home Sunday evening and figures Lin’s in his studio, and when he’s in there, of course, Lex tries his best to keep the disturbances to a minimum—tries, in fact, to never go in there.

It’s not that Lin’s ever complained, and it’s something other than Lex being considerate.

Not that Lex doesn’t himself hate being interrupted when he’s working. He does, and he could easily just play it off that way, as him not wanting to curb Lin’s creativity and self-expression, but Lin’s art isn’t work, not like business is for Lex. It doesn’t get his blood pumping the same way, and Lin’s studio isn’t like Lex’s office.  

Art isn’t business for Lin, despite the fact he has an agent and rakes in a hell of a lot of money selling his paintings and, lately, sculptures, and despite the fact Lin actually owns the house they’re living in and most of the stuff inside it and almost every car he drives like a maniac.

Lex just isn’t all that comfortable in Lin’s studio. It’s too private, even for him.

It’s not that Lin’s art isn’t always somehow crookedly clear and too personal for Lex, and the making of it even more so. It’s always vaguely unsettling to look at, and Lin’s art still manages to sneak up on him, regardless of the fact Lex tries to mentally prepare himself beforehand. Take the haphazard sketch of some sparse trees surrounded by snow that Lex caught sight of last time he was in the studio with Lin, waiting by the doorway with Lin’s coat draped over his arm, waiting for him to hunt down the keys he’d left under a pile of papers over by the drying rack. The sketch was all shadows and negative space, and still it had Lex viscerally recalling moments from their shared childhood—like that first Christmas together, the two of them with Mom, flashes of happiness that have been so well-loved and worn so smooth as to be just scent memories now, pine and melted sugar and silk and thick artist’s paper—and those are butted right up against 2001, the whole tail-end of it, all cold grey terror with Lin in bare feet, staring back at Lex like he was already gone, up on the roof of the old mansion or down in the lobby getting shot and always lugging around that damn necklace and those chunks of green Kryptonite, always trying to kill himself over and over again while pushing Julian and Lex away, and all of that now contrasts, like the sparse bits of white among the dark charcoal of the sketched trees, with last year’s Christmas, when it was just the two of them, men now and some kind of free, when it was he and Lin trying to cook together and killing three bottles of grossly expensive wine and making love numerous times, once against the chill of the library windows, Lin’s naked chest glowing from the reflected fire in the grate, pressed to the glass as he laughed and moaned and dug his fingers back into Lex’s hip.

Lex knows Lin’s art is going to be overwhelming and yet is still caught off guard by how just the simple combination of blue and grey will make him close his eyes and feel ashamed, feel flayed in public at a fucking showing, feel forever smaller than a slug because he remembers, in excruciating detail, all the years he spent hating Lin, totally and absolutely, even as Lin loved him terribly—because grey and blue is Lin’s shorthand for Lex, and it’s _everywhere_. It’s in every painting.

He was staring at Lex all during dinner three, no, four years ago, and even with their table tucked over to the side in an alcove that was risky.

Brothers don’t look at each other like he and Lin. Brothers don’t wish for what Lex wishes.

“What is it?” Lex hissed, as their server took away the appetizer dishes.

“Roman silver,” Lin said, definitively.

Lex must have made a face because Lin grinned, smug, and Lex had to shift a bit in his seat because he always has a weird reaction to that expression on Lin’s face, wanting to simultaneously shove him away like an annoying little brother who’s baiting him and pull him close in a lover’s kiss and, stuck between the two, Lex always chooses neither, does nothing.

“Did I miss something?” he asked before taking another sip of wine, surreptitiously glancing around.

“Your eyes,” Lin whispered, “are Roman silver.” He leaned back in his seat, and Lex felt the air beneath the table move as Lin crossed his legs. “You’ll love this, though: it’s a metallic color, right? But incredibly difficult to produce and almost impossible to photograph accurately.” Then, even having physically pulled back and finally turned his head to look away, Lin was ridiculously close when he said, “Something to be said for the real thing.”

It thus isn’t remotely surprising to Lex that Lin’s art is sometimes more intimate and personal than actual sex with him or that it’s inexplicably more accurate when it’s nonrepresentational and abstracted, that it’s amazingly lifelike when it’s blocks and swipes and towers of precise color.

Some things are lost in translation.

And Lin is always translating and re-presenting and trying to connect the dots, attempting to capture what’s beneath human skin and human bone and human memory, trying to thread everything together just the way he wants it.

Lin said to Lex once, in response to why he’s never tried his hand at photography: “I don’t want to tell people how it should be or show them. I want to _remember_ it, how it really was.”

Lex had said, “But you could make it like it was—software and double-exposure and all that. You could re-make it.”

And like a photo, like a film reel, something tangible and vulnerable and slightly imperfect, Lex can see Lin turn in his arms again and look up at him, can see him as he was then, ninety percent eyes and mouth and ridiculously long hair and one thousand percent what Lex loved.

Lex had suddenly recalled in that moment, some six years ago, and now of course recalls again over and over in a sick loop every time he remembers, the fact that Lionel had taken pictures of Lin when he was a kid, photos he kept in his desk of Lin naked and posed, always stuck in that mold, captured and captured wrongly, inaccurately, exposed and flawed, and Lex remembers blinking with the realization that that was almost certainly a huge reason Lin seemed to almost irrationally despise photography.

Lin then said, in a voice deep and throaty and just this side of slurring: “Can’t go backward, Lex, only ahead.” He’d reached up and cupped Lex’s cheek and whispered against his lips, right before kissing him, “That’s the whole point.”

And that mindset of Lin’s speaks volumes, although Lex doesn’t think they necessarily progress so much as sidestep, like Lex is dragging Lin off the path and deep into the trees. Or maybe it’s Lin dragging Lex.

After all, Lin translates what he’s already felt and seen, sidles alongside the memories even as he tries to deny their existence. He’s always dancing away, and now Lex is, too.

Even when Lin was four, supposedly, when he was young and so trusting, too trusting, when he still looked at Dad, at Lionel, and thought him an ally or friend or mentor, even then it was a balancing act for Lin, the act of picking up a crayon and recreating something for people he wanted to impress, showing just enough but not too much. Lin drew a pre-Raphaelite masterpiece in crayon, and he showed only Lex, and Mom only when Lex begged him to. Art has always been something outside the norm, something risky, something just for Lin, for Lex sometimes, for them.

Lin getting paid for his art isn’t exactly without snags.

He’s taken only two art classes his entire life, both at Met U; he is unequivocally self-taught and it shows in his technique.

Art isn’t business for Lin; it’s a survival tool, a coping mechanism.

And so Lex stays out of Lin’s studio because it’s like ‘Pochade,’ like being back on that beach with those romping figures and immediately gravitating toward the one Lin molded after himself and knowing without a doubt that Lin hurt while sculpting it, hurt to position it, and will hurt to sell it, that it pains him to put himself out there, literally, for strangers to gawk at and misunderstand and buy and not appreciate, but that he does it _because_ it hurts and thus proves he’s still alive.

That’s Lex’s theory, anyway.

So Lex walks into the house on the Sunday following the ‘Pochade’ opening, sees the door to Lin’s studio is shut, and goes about his evening routine. He puts up his work stuff and makes some pleasant small talk with Angie before she leaves for the night. 

She gives him a brief rundown on what’s left for dinner prep as she shrugs on her coat. Tonight’s ham. “You always do fine with the starch and vegetable,” she says, “and everything else is already cooked, so it’s just a matter of not letting it– ”

“ –dry out or burn,” he finishes for her, walking her over to the side door and opening it for her. “Right,” he says, taking a big breath and only half-jokingly saying, “I can do this.”

Angie grins and nods and leaves, moments later waving at him from her car as she drives away to her home, her family.

At first, Lex waits. He’s done it a few times before. He opens a bottle of Riesling and drinks a glass and a half before going upstairs and changing into soft pants and a long-sleeved shirt. He comes back downstairs and lurks in the hallway outside Lin’s studio and listens for him. Then he goes back into the kitchen and finishes his second glass of wine. He checks on the ham and peels potatoes and chops up broccoli.

Lin’s not blasting his music like he usually does, and there were no spraying sounds like when he airbrushes. It was silent and still, and Lex would almost doubt he was even in there if it weren’t for the light under the studio door.

The potatoes are in cold water on the stove, and rather than pour another glass of wine he’d planned on splitting with Lin, Lex walks back to Lin’s studio, where there’s still no sound.

Wearing headphones or just lost in thought maybe, but a feeling or mood is in the air, a sick tingle sliding along the hair on Lex’s arms. It’s not a sound or an image, just an inkling, an emotion.

It is, he realizes, quickly moving forward, something of a memory.

He turns the handle and pushes open the door, wondering, hoping, praying he’s overreacting or that he drank more than he thought, that the wine’s alcohol content was ridiculously high.

Because, suddenly, this is déjà vu.

Inside, the lights are on, and Lin is here, but it’s dark, too dark, and then it clicks in Lex’s mind that it’s not dark, just painted black.

And green.

The whole studio is covered in paint.

Lin still doesn’t talk that much, and Lex isn’t really expecting a response, but he keeps trying to, for some stupid stubborn reason, excavate the words because, yes, it is déjà vu, and it is a memory, and it’s neither because this scene, while different, unfortunately isn’t unfamiliar.

Lin hasn’t chopped all his hair off or crashed his car into a building. He hasn’t destroyed all his sketches or overdosed or hanged himself, but Lex knows this is a sign, knows the look on Lin’s face as he walks around him, knows, like a knife to the gut, that tiny scared thread in Lin’s voice as he asks, as he tries so stupidly and stubbornly to keep pushing things away while holding them too close, “Hey, how was your day?”

Lex says, and already his voice is giving him away, showing his hand, his concern, “Come sit with me, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Lin closes his eyes, and Lex moves forward. He takes Lin’s face between his hands, and he tries not to cry.

Then Lin says, lips as dry and pale as Lex’s hand, “I can’t remember.”

Lex frowns, of course, because he still doesn’t know what to do, and he doesn’t know exactly what Lin means, what he’s forgotten, who he’s talking to because maybe it’s not Lex, but it’s not hard to pull him close, to realize how cold he is or how thin and light he feels in Lex’s arms, like he’s already disappearing—or still is.

Like maybe he’s never stopped hiding from Lex.

It’s all perception, naturally, but Lex hugs Lin and isn’t hugged back and it feels just the same as it always does when Lin is trying to kill himself, when his first and second and third thought is always for Lex and Julian and Lucas and never for himself, never for facing what’s terrorizing him but always pushing it aside. All his energy goes toward suppressing.

But maybe this time can be different.

Maybe this time, Lex has caught him before he’s too far gone.

Time then seems to stretch because it’s everything all at once—Lin’s sculptures and sketches and paintings, like back in Daniel’s office all those years ago, like holding a thinner, stranger Lin on the roof some 16 years ago, like his thin wrists and hacked hair and blank, dead eyes, like Lex now finally forcing himself to face the fact that Lin’s depression and trauma isn’t ever going anywhere because it’s never leaving, has never left or gotten better, no matter how far Lin tries to push it aside or talk around it or not look at it head-on, and no matter how hard Lex tries to follow his lead and play along.

Lex has the urge to start babbling, to just steadily annoy Lin into reacting, even as he searches for the right turn of phrase, the right memory that will reconcile this moment with all the others.

Because he keeps trying, and failing, trying to get it right.

And so what pops into his head and right out his mouth, what has Lin breathing out quickly in something almost, very nearly, just this side of a chuckle is: “He’s not worth it, not worth anything, but that ham is going to be so fucking dry, Lin.”

Lin’s arms come up, and he makes a sound Lex might call a sob if he were being kind, and he asks, thickly, almost unintelligibly, “What was the song Mom used to sing?”

Lex almost chokes, startled, but eventually he finds it.

He says, “We’re right here,” and, “You’re with me,” and he hums against Lin’s temple, as Lin smears green and black paint all over Lex, all over himself, all through his hair and in the shower and down the drain.

And when Lin finally glances up—after the shower, standing wet and dripping on the rug, as Lex rubs at him with a towel, trying to get him warm again, trying to bring him back or forward or close so he’s not alone wherever he’s fallen—Lex can almost feel the wind rush past them and away, can just about hear Lin weeping in a different bathroom and call through to him, call back.

And he’s undoubtedly gripping Lin’s shoulders too hard, even for him, definitely too clingy and desperate, but Lex says, “Hey.”

And Lin almost looks Lex in the eye as he whispers, “Sorry.”

So when Lex wants to simultaneously shove him and kiss him, he makes a choice, finally.

He kisses Lin, and Lin kisses back.


	6. Chapter 6

Lin doesn’t really sleep that night, largely fakes it for Lex’s benefit, which by all rights should be hilarious since Lex is awake most of the night too, only drifting into unconsciousness around four in the morning.

Lin spends the time trying to find his way back to some kind of steady plateau but in all actuality winds up just reliving various mistakes he’s made.

He can’t quite recall the last time he laughed or thought something was genuinely funny, although it was undoubtedly something Lex said. So many times Lin has only retrospectively appreciated Lex’s sense of humor.

He thinks to wonder if he didn’t learn humor from Lex.

But Lin must go deep enough into his head to still somehow wake up with the sun in the morning or at least once again realign with it. Maybe he resets like a clock every night, more mechanical than organic, more alien machine than human being.

He pretends he’s real and he’s ok, pretends for his own sake as much as for Lex’s now, but he used to act tough for Julian and for Lucky, and he misses that, misses even the façade of strength.

Everyone sees through him now.

And it’s awful to realize, with Lex lying next to him, that Lin barely acted at all for Lionel and never acted stronger. Oh, he lied to Lionel all the time, withheld information and redirected his attention elsewhere, redirected it back onto himself and away from Lex or Lucky or even, right there at the end, Julian, but Lin was still honest more often than not. He used the truth like a weapon, and more than anything Lin rolled over for Lionel and said yes and let him run roughshod over everything. He didn’t want to, but he let him, and now it bothers him how honest he was back then, more honest than he has been since.

He tries with Lex but can’t quite bring himself to actually say the words out loud. He said them once, and what does it say about him that he can’t say them again to someone he actually loves?

In the early gloom and with everything he knows exists in this world and others, all the lives and possibilities that bleed through like wet paint, staining multiple layers and distorted by obstructions like time and space—Lin seriously considers if maybe by wanting Lex so badly for his own he didn’t inadvertently strike a bargain with Fate, or even with himself in the future or across worlds: give up these two in perpetuity for this one and a ghost and all that came before, all of the future for all of the past, almost all of the truth for almost none of it.

He’s glad to be here with Lex; he just wishes he weren’t who he is here and now.

He wishes he were someone else, like a daydream, like a story, like a painting.

Lin learned to read English largely by, like many human children, conversing with adults and attempting to mimic them and having children’s books read to him and in turn trying to read them back. The books were full of fairy tales with talking animals, happy families, and the great outdoors. Lin grew up with windows to look out of and adults all around him all the time, but every story was fantasy to him. Who really opened a door and simply walked outside? Who actually hugged their mom every day? Who went to school with other kids?

And the talking with adults wasn’t any better. He remembers endless questions about who his parents were and what he could recall of where he grew up, and Lin told them the truth. At first, he always told all the truth.

And now, Lin doesn’t tell anyone the truth, just the tiniest bits and pieces, little scraps to keep them off his tail. He tries with Lex, with his art, but it doesn’t really count if he can’t actually say it.

When he was little and couldn’t always find the words, they tried other mediums, which is when the drawing started.

“Here,” one tech had said, setting down onto the table a sharpened pencil and some blank white sheets of paper, thin and easily wrinkled and likely, Lin guesses now, just pulled from the printer, “try to recreate it.” He’d looked at Lin through the visor of his helmet and said, tapping the paper with his thick, hazmat-covered index finger, “Make it look like _home_.”

Lin always feels like he’s tracing himself and his history, retracing where he’s been in the hopes of finding something he missed, a clue that will help him move forward, and what does it say about him that he can recreate the past and recreate it and recreate it again but never talk about it, that he can remember and not remember simultaneously, that he can tell Lex he loves him while constantly comparing him to Lionel?

In truth, and Lin hasn’t ever said this because he never says anything to anyone, not even Lucas, it was a long time before he actually met Lionel, and at first, of course, he liked him.

He liked that Lionel didn’t wear a big suit that covered every inch of him, even his face. He liked Lionel’s long hair because it was soft and smelled of something other than cleaning products and he let Lin touch it, and he liked Lionel’s deep eyes that always looked at Lin and not at a clipboard or back through the window to make sure the others were “Getting all this?”

He liked that Lionel touched him because he didn’t realize for so long that that was a part of why he cried at night, alone in his room because Lin was lonely and scared, and Lionel was the first person since his parents who made him feel better.

Time and memory are strange and even stranger for Lin and Lucas. For many years, Lin couldn’t remember or chose not to remember those early days in the Centre and the time before then. It was like a suitcase he packed and forgot to unpack. He simply pushed it to the back of his closet, where it collected dust. Only later, ten or eleven or twelve years after the fact, did he realize he knew more than he thought.

And it wasn’t like a switch was thrown and he could instantly pick right back up where he left off.

It was more like he drifted off and only realized it because he finally woke up.

Lin had hid those memories from himself for so long and hid them from Julian and Lucas and Lex, and it took work to find them again, to unlock the suitcase and crack it open, work to sort everything out and try to place it.

And of course the horrifying truth is he never hid any of it from Lionel. Lionel was the one who helped him pack.

Copies of copies, that’s all that Lin had left because he’d already given away the originals, so even when he found his parents again, when he found learning how to speak and read and write English, when he even found his first year with Lucas, they weren’t really only his memories anymore.

He didn’t know better.

He didn’t have any other choice.

He was just a scared child.

But what’s left in the aftermath is the fact he shared something important with a man who’s now gone, shared what he should’ve waited to share with people who are still alive.

And now he’s left fucking retracing himself just to reclaim even a sliver of who he should have been.

Lin still can’t recall them in detail, but he knows his parents loved him, can remember his mom often holding him on her hip and fiddling with his hair, swiping at his cowlicks and curls. He remembers his dad smiling at him and pulling funny faces when his mom wasn’t looking and knows he used to run the pad of his thumb from the corner of Lin’s eye back to his ear and that that always made Lin giggle for some reason.

He remembers, in a brief flash, his father’s friends or comrades or coworkers gathered together all in one room, and they’re all tall and dark and serious and hardened, thin, weathered and scraped spare like Lin is now, haunted. In the memory, Lin’s still small enough that he needs to be carried in his father’s arms, and the adults all turn to look at him and his father as they enter the room. Lin remembers them frowning and thinks now that they were angry or betrayed or resentful of his father—of him. It’s not their family home or his father’s office but still somewhere familiar, and Lin and his father are outnumbered. There are raised voices and shouting, a heavy tension in the air that feels, to a tiny boy, like it won’t ever clear, and maybe it didn’t. A room of angry people, but he can pull free from memory now two faces, a man’s and a woman’s, can almost hear their voices, hear his father say their names, hear someone among their party call him ‘Kal.’

So he takes this memory, and he tries to place it, tries to fit himself back into it and see where it leaves him.

For so long after he’d come to this planet, months and months, no one touched him or cradled him close or talked calmly and affectionately to him. No one explained anything.

Then, one overcast day, in walked a man who put his bare hand on Lin’s shoulder, on the back of Lin’s neck, who looked at Lin when he talked, and wore such interesting clothes, with strange hemlines and pleats and funny materials that were alternatively slick and smooth, soft and coarse.

He greeted Lin with something Lin can now recognize as almost a hug, almost a caress, and he listened to what Lin said, looked at every worksheet he filled out and every drawing he made, and he stayed for hours, just the two of them.

Lin loved Lionel when he didn’t know better, when he was lonely, and a sick part of him wonders if he didn’t fall in love with him back then too, which certainly made what he learned about him years later that much more painful and what he did for him that much easier.

But where does that leave him now?

Where’s the original?

It’s easy to forget and difficult to remember.

Or is that backward?

Is Lin the alien, or is everyone else?

And it’s dark still when Lex finally falls asleep with his right hand just touching Lin’s hip, when Lin finally feels like he can breathe without someone watching his every move and cataloguing his reactions.

But he deserves the suspicion and the betrayal because he does in fact lie and withhold the truth. He hurts the ones he loves and fails at protecting them, leaves them worse than he found them.

It’s not just about Julian refusing to talk to him or him being jealous of Lucas. It’s not just terror at the thought of Lex finding out what Lin’s really thinking about most of the time.

Lin’s at least 31 years old, if not more, and the reason the truth always hurts is because there’s never one right answer, never a clear path to setting things straight.

People aren’t orderly, and Lin isn’t, despite what he wishes, a machine just in need of a tuning.

The truth, reality, it’s always both and neither and none of the above. Lin is real most of the time, but he’s never real all of the time, never real to real people, only to ghosts, real only through ghosts.

The truth is he misses Lionel even though he hates and fears him still, misses his parents even though he’s angry at them for abandoning him, even though he understands why.

The truth is he wants to die but wishes he didn’t, wishes he could reach across his body right now and touch Lex who’s right here in this moment, this slice before dawn, but Lin doesn’t, won’t ever because they might as well be living across the country from each other like that kid Lin used to be strong for and ultimately disappointed, like that boy with the glasses Lin held on for despite it all who flies higher now than he can.

The moment’s already gone, and Lin keeps missing it.

Lin wants to live in the present and be happy and smile and joke and laugh every time Lex says something witty, but he–

He never learned how, and he keeps searching for clues, but he’s afraid it’s always too early and too late, that he’s doomed himself to a no man’s land where it’s just him and his memories.

It’s dawn, and the sun is rising, and Lin wants to be brave and strong.


	7. Chapter 7

Monday morning, Lex calls in to work, Lin feigning sleep beside him, and all Lex can see of him are a few inches between sheet and shadow, the briefest glimpse of Lin’s sloped shoulders tapering down to his waist.

It’s almost a metaphor, all that Lex can see of Lin like the tip of the iceberg.

Drawback of being in love, moments like this, where he hurts because Lin’s hurting, where he’s ashamed because he only just spotted him falling apart.

An accident he just happened upon.

Lin’s breaks never come from nowhere. There’s always some catalyst. What is it this time?

And so the mental tallying starts.

Is it Lex?

Is it them?

Is it the artwork, the new show?

Meanwhile, on the phone, Lanie says she has it handled, that she’ll reschedule and take care of all of it. She’s always been a great assistant, discreet, politic, clever. And she’s done this before, which is perhaps why it shouldn’t surprise him when, just as Lex is preparing to hang up, she says, quietly and uncertainly, “Take all the time you need. I’ll hold down the fort. Uh, let me know if I can help, ok? He’s always been—real kind to me and—everything. Anyway. See ya later, Lex.”

Shouldn’t surprise him but does, and Lex is still losing his breath, never mind trying to catch it, when he ends the call with a terse, “Yeah, thanks, Lanie. See ya later.”

He hadn’t said one word to her about anything having to do with Lin, and still she knew. He tries not to talk about Lin at all, really, lest he let something slip he shouldn’t. . .

Lest something slip away.

He almost catches something there, a hint, a loose thread, but the thought unravels before he’s able to put words to it.

Is it Lucas?

The superheroing or lack thereof?

Lin’s right here next to him in bed, having heard, most likely, both sides of that phone call. It’s pushing seven, and they didn’t even manage to talk about anything last night, just went through the routine of damage control, and that’s when Lex brushes what he thinks might be the wound Lin’s trying to hide: Lionel.

Oh, that’s got to be the crux right there, and here’s Lex only stumbling past the truth what’s probably weeks down the line. He has the awful feeling that, with every successive breakdown or suicide attempt, he’s becoming lazier in picking up the pieces.

It’s not Bruce or Dick. It could be Julian or the art show, something Lin hasn’t mentioned that went wrong like a buyer or critic. It could be Lucas or something with Lin’s—heritage.

But Lex has that feeling, that spark of recognition that a lot of what’s eating at Lin and has him spiraling is Lionel because it’s always at least partially Lionel.

But maybe that’s just him half-assing it again.

Maybe, Lex thinks, as he glances at Lin’s body at his side—toward that shadowy figure that’s simultaneously the Lin Lex is allowed to know and the stranger Lex isn’t permitted to more than glimpse—that’s a bit too simplistic.

He got Lin in the shower last night and went down to corral the food into the fridge and trash. And it was again routine. Lex then came back upstairs and pulled Lin out of the shower, dried him off and handed him soft clothes to put on and then herded him to bed, and that’s where they stayed all night, not talking, not sleeping really, not tooling around on their phones, just lying in bed and thinking, hurting, rehashing everything over and over again.

Maybe Lin went away in his head like he does. Lex hopes so. He prays Lin wasn’t thinking the same things Lex was.

Lex had that song Mom always sung them stuck in his head, and he tried to recall all of Lin’s drawings from way back when, the ones in red ink that should have been a wakeup call but weren’t or at least weren’t for Lex. They’d been a sign to Bruce, and isn’t that a kick to the teeth?

Maybe Lex is too close to see clearly, or maybe he’s just oblivious.

Lex had also thought of that crisis seven years ago where he didn’t see Lin for almost two weeks while Lin and Lucas were off saving the world from more aliens.

He thought of Excelsior and how it must have been so different for Lin, different from home and different even from Lex’s time there. He felt glad Lian hadn’t had to go there and wonders if the school is even still open. Probably. They’ll get no more money from this set of Luthors, but Lionel had made a number of big donations before and during Lex’s stint there. One of the labs was named after him.

At least Dad hadn’t tried to dedicate it to Mom.

Or one of his lovers.

Christ, there was that whole debacle with Morgan fucking Edge right around Lin’s suicide attempt in 2004.

And that was definitely a suicide attempt. Lin might refer to it, and only when he has to, as “an accident,” but Lex knows better.

And is it still called Luthor Laboratory? Has the school renamed it? Lex never thought to inquire. They haven’t had anything to do with that place. Julian attended an academy in Gotham, and Lin did the bare minimum to test out of secondary school.

And all night, it was Lin breathing quietly less than a foot away, and in the gloom Lex thought of Lucas and Julian and wondered if he should tell them about this newest attempt or just keep it quiet, keep it his and Lin’s secret. Does it count? Should they know? Lin won’t want them to, but he never wants anyone to know anything more than they absolutely have to in order to survive. He barely tells Lex anything.

He wouldn’t have told Lex this time, either.

Lex remembers Bruce’s bathroom, stumbling in. Lin hadn’t said a fucking word.

He hadn’t said anything to Lian back in that fucking house when they were kids, either, not before trying to poison himself with Kryptonite the first time.

And he was silent leading up to the 2004 attempt. That one made it into all the papers and tabloids and blogs. Lex remembers overhearing people gossiping about it at the office, can recall standing in line for coffee at a fucking Starbucks and catching snippets from the people in line behind him.

“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, given everything they say happened in that house. Jesus!”

“Yeah, but you’d think they’d have gotten the poor kid some help by now, right? I mean, how long ago was that?”

“That stuff never goes away, though. I mean, it sticks with a person, right? Man, I do not envy them that. Money? Yeah. But all that shit they had to go through to get it? Hell. No.”

Following the actual crash itself, Lin hadn’t stepped outside the house from January until July. Now, the incident serves as a reminder whenever Lin’s name comes up, like an age update or Lex’s partying or Bruce’s three-year MIA gap.

‘Colin Luthor, who in 2004 crashed his abusive father’s car into an abandoned warehouse. . . ”

The incident’s even been repurposed and twisted for the TV-movie. In the third act of _Blanket Permission_ , the Marcus character steals one of the close friend’s cars and deliberately drives it, at high speed, into a tree on the edge of the estranged father’s property. It’s the beginning of the final showdown between the brothers and their father.

They didn’t even get _that_ right.

Lin didn’t crash one of Bruce’s cars. He crashed one of Lionel’s, his black 2000 Ferrari 360 Modena, to be exact, with the blood red interior, the car he’d taken Lin on drives in, drives Lin probably still thinks Lex doesn’t know about.

Lin wasn’t the only one spying back then, however. Julian used to tell Lex all sorts of things. The 360 Modena was one of Lionel’s favorites right there at the end and arguably one of the gaudiest fucking cars ever designed.

And Lin didn’t ram it into a tree but a building: the fire-damaged concrete wall of what had once been the Centre, to be exact.

In the script, Marcus is pushing 50 mph when he crashes into the tree. Lex is positive Lin was pushing 80. Lionel’s Ferrari pretty much exploded on impact, and the wall of what had once been the Centre was only slightly affected, further testament to Lionel’s meticulousness.

It was even the anniversary of their father’s death because Lin’s always lived and breathed symbolism. Undoubtedly goes hand in hand with being an artist.

The rest of them had been in Gotham at the time, Lin having claimed he was going goddamned Christmas shopping, the little asshole.

Lex remembers getting a phone call, answering, and standing up in Bruce’s living room, Julian at his side on the loveseat, Lucas across the way in a huge armchair. He remembers Alfred turning around and the look of shock on his face. Lex can remember the pattern on Alfred’s damn sweater.

“Is this Mr. Alexander Luthor?” an unfamiliar male voice had asked.

And Lex’s heart had all but stopped because he’d known, immediately, that it was about Lin.

“Yes,” he’d said, standing up abruptly, “this is he. May I ask who’s calling?”

“This is Detective Jake Simmons, Mr. Luthor. I’m afraid I have some bad news. Are you sitting, sir?”

Lex had almost laughed.

By now, he figures they’re well onto the second hand in terms of counting Lin’s suicide attempts. Maybe even a third hand—both of Lin’s and one of Lex’s helping keep track.

Whatever it was that would have happened last night had Lex not intervened, Lex thinks this must be the fifth one he’s been here for, but there were more before and in between.

He’s most terrified about all the little ones that Lin just barely pulled himself from, all the ones he never let Lex know about or that Lex himself missed noticing by a hairsbreadth.

He knows about the time when Lin was 12 of course, when Julian called Lex at Princeton convinced that Lin was dead. That was Lin’s first exposure to Red Kryptonite, actually, and of course involuntary.

It wasn’t the last, although those following were always of Lin’s own volition.

“What’s it like?” Lex had asked years later, probably before or during the 2007 fiasco, when Lin had tried framing wearing Red Kryptonite as similar to getting drunk.

Lin had said, “Like I’m in control, or like– it’s as though I’m finally alone and awake and know who I am, what I want.”  

There have been more Red Kryptonite scares since. After Lionel died, Lin went a few weeks wearing the necklace and insisting he was fine.

“You’re making a big deal out of nothing, Lex,” he’d said, almost but not quite slurring. Lex can always tell when Lin’s wearing that damned necklace.

And it’s not like getting drunk. Lex is more than passing familiar with that.

It’s like getting high.

All night, Lex has catalogued Linny falling apart and his own role in each and every one he’s fucking aware of.

Was that attempt when he was 12 even the first?

He must have tried so many times while Lex was in college. In his deposition for Lex gaining custody, Lin had disclosed on camera that he’d tried multiple times to kill himself.

Lex puts his phone back down on his nightstand and then turns in the bed. He reaches out and touches Lin, runs his hand from Lin’s forehead down around his temple and cheek and jaw, winding up underneath Lin’s chin, which is just barely prickly with stubble.

Lex loves Lin’s stubble.

God, he loves Colin.

“Hey, you,” Lex says.

And Lin opens his eyes, giving up the ruse. He turns his head, and he doesn’t say anything, but he meets Lex’s eyes, and he’s still here beside him.

Lex moves close and pulls Lin into a kiss, for good or ill.

He says, “I love you,” before he can think better of it.

And Lin almost smiles.

At least, that’s what Lex is allowed to see. That's what he chooses to believe.


End file.
